- Today's Word
Ebullient
ih-BUHL-yuhnt (or ih-BOOL-yuhnt)
Definition
- (adjective) Overflowing with enthusiasm, energy, or excitement; exuberant.
Example
Her ebullient personality lit up every room she entered, making her the heart of every gathering.
Fun Fact
“Ebullient” comes from the Latin ebullire, meaning “to bubble out.” Originally used to describe boiling liquids, the word evolved to capture figurative “bubbling over” of emotions or excitement. It’s a vivid reminder of how language connects physical phenomena to human emotions.
(adjective) So fundamentally different in kind that comparison or combination is difficult or impossible.
The committee was made up of disparate voices — a retired military general, a teenage climate activist, a Wall Street banker, and a rural farmer — who somehow had to reach a single consensus.
Disparate comes from the Latin disparatus, the past participle of disparare — “to separate” — built from dis- (“apart”) and parare (“to prepare” or “to arrange”). It entered English in the 16th century, used to describe things so fundamentally unlike one another that they resist any meaningful comparison or grouping. It shares its Latin root with separate, making the two words distant cousins whose shared ancestry reflects their shared meaning.